Five Minute Friday.

“SHE”

Go.

I see the prompt word “SHE” and think of Flylady’s “Sidetracked Home Executives.”

Sidetracked. That seems to be my patternless pattern of living lately.

And I’m really getting tired of it. Tired of flopping around from one plan to another, or jumping to this interruption or that, of following such convoluted branched pathways, of ending up with a crumbling structure for my days, my weeks, my life.

Routine is good, and good routine is better. Good and holy routine is the best, and for a little squeak of a while, I had that, at least a taste. O take me back, God, to the good and holy, and bring the Sidetrackedness of my Home-Executiveness to a decisive end.

Sweet peace. Sweet time. Sweet Lord.

{PART TWO in the series LIVING LOVE, picking up where PART ONE  ended with the questions, “So where does one get love? And how does one obtain it, and keep it within, or get resupplied?”}

They troubled me, those prayer prompts…

He went to Africa and I stayed home.

I posted myself at my prayer places and prayed. A lot.

My only contact with the mission team: just one phone call, halfway through those two weeks.

I learned then that God had been putting in my heart the team’s most needed petitions.

So the second week it disturbed me that all my prayer prompts urged me to pray for my husband’s health…

Turned out, he’d been lying dreadfully ill, in his one-room shelter, on borrowed air mattress (his own new one having leaked astoundingly)… while the rest of the crew worked on.

You’d have to know him to get how uncharacteristic this is.

But it was the characteristic that got him so sick in the first place.

You see, there was this important job to do. Heavy work. Fetching shovelfuls of cement and handing up homemade cinder blocks  to local masons (of a sort), building up fledgling Bible college walls.

So, when he realized he’d left his cap and water bottle behind, he didn’t “waste time” going back for them. Later, hot and tired and feeling queasy, he still kept working without break. Didn’t want those nationals to think American men were wimps (or just he was). So he soldiered on till noon.

And then…

Was he sick! The sight of the food they invited him to share churned his stomach. His head felt woozy and his body strangely weak. He. had. to go. lie. down.

Him! Who never lies down on the job!

One other mission member suffered worse. Passed right out and had to be carried off the job.

Yet these two were perhaps the most physically fit on the assignment.

Sometimes (well, maybe most of the time) some of us overestimate our ability to hold up. We just keep pushing on—to detriment of body health and work quality, even quantity, when summed up.

You’ve gotta have water!

Your head oughta have cover in pounding sunlight.

And you need breaks. Especially when work holds unforeseen demands, like, in this case, high altitude unbeknownst to the worker.

Then, last summer, back here at home, even without high altitude, with water right nearby: worse—wracking pain, tortuous nausea, sickness all night. August heat and heavy work and substituting commercial drinks for plain old water…. well, that probably helped form the kidney stone…

Now he carries water more faithfully and refills often.

May I learn from his example! (Especially after not doing so in the last late heat wave! But I’d rather not talk about that…)

To live out love, we need that other “Water”—the John 4:14 kind—and enough time with the Giver to really drink it in…

Multitudes of us push ourselves past our limits in “ministry.” Capable, diligent God-followers. We underestimate our need for Wellspring breaks and frequent refills of the Water of Life, and just keep jumping at every demand.

“But there’s so much to do! And who’ll do it if I don’t? And… And…”

Work and worker suffer—till sometimes worker burns right out.

The challenge is how to get sufficient Wellspring refills.

It is a challenge. But I’ve wakened up to the crying necessity. So… I’m working on it. Not done yet. But God’s been teaching me some things I wish I’d “gotten” decades ago. (More in upcoming posts.)

—

“Whoever drinks of the water I give…” (John 4:14)

“Come to the waters…, come buy without money…” (Is 55:1)

“If I have not love, I am nothing…” (1 Cor 13:1-3)

“God is love…” (1 Jo 4:8)

“Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5)

***

Linked to

{PART ONE in a series on LIVING LOVE}

“Love.”

That is the Kingdom’s greatest commandment.

Love God. Love your neighbor.

“Do.”

This is the culture’s commandment.

Do this. Do that. Hurry, hurry, git er done, then race on to the next thing. Or, better yet, keep doing the first five things while adding on another bunch of doings to the obligation schedule to do simultaneously. (And whoever dies from the most multi-tasking wins!)

Are the two the same in the Kingdom?

Is loving doing?

Better question: is doing loving?

Of course Love does indeed manifest itself in deeds of certain kinds. Yet, you can do lots of really “nice things,” even very demanding nice things, sometimes the most “sacrificial” nice things, without love! (And they’ll count for nothing!)

It isn’t the action alone that makes it love. It isn’t even sacrifice. It’s more the motive behind all that activity and sacrifice, and the power energizing it.

Look at 1 Corinthians 13.

I mean really look. Carefully. See what it truly says instead of all you might have heard human tongues and pens telling you it says. It might shock you, even if you memorized the whole chapter once upon a time…

I’ve heard commentary on it saying love is action, period. But two big concepts in this passage oppose that idea, or at least temper it.

1)  Right from the beginning it speaks of love rather as something we have or do not have, and of how vital a possession it is, in Kingdom values, even compared to things we might rate top gifts:

Even if my doings include…

speaking with outstanding oratory skill and vast language command, even with the gift of speaking angels’ tongues,

knowing all prophecy, wisdom, and knowledge,

moving mountains with my powerful faith,

giving away all my belongings,

even sacrificing my body to be burned (as most texts say),

 …all this doing is—NOTHING! (it says) IF I DO NOT. HAVE. LOVE.

2) When it does mention actions, it identifies love with more not-doings than doings:

Love DOES NOT:

envy,

boast, or parade itself,

be/get/act puffed up,

behave disgracefully, or rudely,

seek its own thing (as in “This is my thing. I wanna do my thing”),

rejoice in (get enjoyment out of) iniquity/unrighteousness,

get provoked to anger,

reckon (plan, think up) evil…

And, well, there’s one more thing that it does NOT DO. It doesn’t fail.

(Yeeks! I fail. Lots! And with lots of the above. What do I do with that fact?)

And where this gem of a passage finally does list verbs, notice how little visible action they exhibit: It…

suffers long,

rejoices in the truth,

bears all,

believes all,

hopes all,

endures all.

All these “actions” can be quite invisible to onlookers.

Summed up: you gotta have love! Or nothing else counts!

Alas! I know this, honestly: Generally speaking, I’m love-poor. Sometimes love-destitute! In and of myself.

Besides that, in my experience, I can have love (or seem to) and run out of it in the exhausting effort of duty doing—or in a moment’s blindsiding. What about that?

Either my duty-doing never did have love in the first place, or Love is like fuel, something we need to keep getting replenished.

How about you? By 1 Corinthians’ standards, do you typically, enduringly have this kind of love? In all situations?

So where does one get love?

And how does one obtain it, and keep it within, or get resupplied?

It’s taken so many years, but God has been showing me some things…

I’ll share some of them…

In upcoming posts.

Things have lain quiet in this blog corner for a while.

I was otherwise occupied. 

Elsewhere, some of the time.

A brief elsewhere, but so blessed. Just husband and me: Where cell phone service didn’t reach (read “intrude”), where internet connecting required more complicated action than merited the effort.

And what freedom just those two not-havings gave us!

Together we savored five star foods, ventured quiet walks (but not too long, because he’d hurt his back with… yep, overwork!), visited the excellent bookstore at hand (of course), toured an interesting local history museum (that stirred the notion of writing some fiction), sat in nooks and crannies sprinkled with shadows, read a lot, picnicked by rushing waters, and drank in beautiful views. We laughed and reminisced on thirty years of marriage and the incredible things God has done as we’ve steered through challenges and victories, disappointments and joys, together. 

I’ve been “absent” for two other reasons:

1) The “otherwise occupied” was very occupied. 

Familiar faces appeared at the door, then spent afternoons stretching into evenings, or a couple of overnights.

Phone calls surprised me with long ago voices and spawned more get-togethers.

Another year’s harvest cried and pleaded and shouted and screamed (and is still at it!), for canning and freezing and drying and storing, accompanied by the siren call of peeling paint and pre-fall clean-up and all the other needs to prepare for winter.

And again we tried to squeeze in those many “events” folks around here schedule for before the nip of killing frost that signals icy roads are soon to follow…

2) Yet amid all this, I purposed not to rob myself, as last year, of precious, needful time apart, to spend with Him, looking up.

My soul needs this harvest time,

for inventorying the treasures old and new He’s put within my stewardship,

for doing the needful searching of soul, to determine: what to keep, what to use up, what to put aside, what to throw out,

to be still so I can hear His voice.

This has been a challenge, and it didn’t always happen. Summer’s blessings are also interruptions. 

But we need the stilling—at least I do—need the time for soul restoring, heart reorienting. Otherwise the blessing in the interruptions, and the presence of mind and strength of spirit I need to meet them with grace and greet them with pleasure, all get lost in the overload.

So today this corner is still quite still. And it may not get exactly raucous for a couple of weeks. For now I just leave you with some of the scenes that blessed me. May you enter their moments, too, and breathe in a little of their peace…

And He said…, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” 

*****

Linked to

On the Five-Minute-Friday prompt, “Red”…

GO!

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning…”

So many “red lights” brought me to anchor on my journey—stopped me short and paused me long where I longed to move forward—thwarted (again and again!) my efforts to navigate God’s route for me as I’d (mis?)perceived it.

Morning suns often burned bright behind cloud cover, but then sent the message: “Red sky at morning, sailor take warning…” And warnings proved true.

Now, in life’s evening, I’ve thought to draw back, just rest in the harbor at anchor. It’s time for “retirement,” right? in more ways than one?—time to enjoy a sweeter, closer, quieter time, more often alone with my blessed Beloved, and savor the sunset with Him?

But the sky, it seems, is turning red. At evening. And what does an evening red sky tell a sailor? Just to sit in the harbor, or venture out where boats have lost their light?—where mariners lie marooned by rough waters and rocky shoals and tidal changes and salty oceans of tears?—where needy ones have been hungering long for a delivery, of physical food, or the other kind?

Taking soundings in the sunset…

“When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”    -Matthew 16:2-3

*****